


Running From You

by Batsymomma11



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe-no hunting, Best Friends, Brothers, Family Feels, Feels, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Dean/Cas, Pre-Slash, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22575562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batsymomma11/pseuds/Batsymomma11
Summary: Dean finally makes the right decision to leave an abusive relationship he has been trapped in for the last two years. Sam and Cas are there to help him pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Castiel, Dean Winchester/Other(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Running From You

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Supernatural or its characters. I do own this story. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

“You’re doing the right thing, Dean.”

It’s hot outside. Cicadas buzzing, the air conditioning whirring at a rapid pace just to cough out a few drops of cool air. But I can barely feel the heat. My hands are ice on the handles of my duffle and my stomach feels leaden as I stare down at the empty husk of it on the bed. I should grab some things from the dresser. Get my toothbrush. Razor. All the little things that still remain and that are still _mine._

“Dean?”

“Yeah?” I blink up at Sammy and see him frowning at me, his brows crinkled with worry. “I’m fine. I’m just—” my gaze drops back to the duffle and then over to the dresser and I make my feet move. I make them step slowly over to the few drawers that are mine. Everything is folded inside.

Michael always folds my clothes better than I ever could. I gave up on doing it the right way months ago…looking at my shirts all lined up like sardines inside makes my stomach clench.

“Let me do it.”

“I got it.”

“You don’t. Let me just—”

“I said I got it, Sam. Back off.”

“Fine,” Sammy steps back, hands raised, his eyes wide and worried. It makes the sickness in my middle worse. The cramping sensation of humiliation and fear that much more potent at the back of my tongue.

“Sammy I—”

“I get it, Dean. Don’t worry about it.”

I swallow thickly, the clawing in my blood turning frantic and my eyes burn with unshed tears. “He’s just—He’s fucked me up, Sammy.”

“I know.”

“He—he made me—he made me think that this was always what I wanted. That I _needed_ someone to take care of me and that I couldn’t do it on my own and now I just—”

“It’s okay.”

I shake my head, losing the battle for control as the tears slip down my whiskered cheeks unchecked. “It’s not okay. It—it might never be, again, Sammy. He broke me.”

“Dean—”

“I hate him.”

I watch Sammy’s jaw clench, his hands fisting into lethal weapons at his sides and I feel my body tense automatically. “I do too.”

“I know.”

“It’s over now, Dean. We’re leaving. You will never see Michael again. I promise.”

There was a time in my life that I would have balked at needing to be reassured. I would have brow-beaten Sammy with insults and tossed back crude jokes to cover my irritation. Anything but cry harder. Anything but lean into my little brother when he wraps me tight into his chest and tells me it’ll be okay. Anything but that.

I let Sammy pack my duffle. I walk robotically behind him down the stairs to this house I let myself think was ‘our’ home and I follow dutifully out the front door to where the Impala is parked in the drive. The heat is thick like a wet blanket outside. So hot it makes my Stones t-shirt cling to every inch of my chest like a second skin.

When I’m buckled into the passenger seat, red-faced and blotchy, the sensation of regret is barely noticeable. Barely there beyond the grief and the anger. But I feel it. I wrap my arms around my middle to defend against it and will myself not to break again. Not in front of Sammy.

I can’t—not again.

It takes sixteen hours to get back to Lebanon and when we pull into the unpaved drive of the house, I feel every cell in my body sag with relief. Sammy must feel it too because when he shuts the engine off, we just sit there, staring at the front door. We don’t move at all.

“Home sweet home.”

“Yeah,” I force out the word past the cotton in my mouth and manage a weak smile. Sammy returns it but doesn’t make any move to start exiting the vehicle. The silence would be stifling with anyone else. But with Sammy? And sitting in Baby? It feels like I’m already home.

“Sammy?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know?”

“Did I know what?”

“About Michael? That he was—”

“No.”

The word is final. There is no room for misinterpretation and for a brief flickering moment, there is relief. Relief that Sammy didn’t see the sort of man Michael really was until it was too late either. He was fooled. Just like me. I wasn’t the only one who fell for his saccharine smile and corny jokes. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t see who he could become when he was behind closed doors. Or how every ounce of control I gave him would cost me far more than just a lost verbal battle.

“Come on. I’m starving.”

That’s all it takes. A modicum of normalcy to jolt me into moving again. We get my bags and start dinner before unpacking. I dread seeing my old room and what sort of pain it might invoke so I hide out in the common area. I stare sightlessly into the empty fireplace and wait for Sammy as he asked me to until he brings out chicken noodle soup and slightly burned toast. The gesture is sweet. But I’m not really hungry.

I manage a couple of bites before feeling too sick to stomach anymore.

Michael was always trying to cure me of my bad eating habits. His efforts weren’t entirely wasted. I can barely look at food without thinking of what he might say now.

Or how he might make me pay for it later. Cold looks and bitter words. Starvation of another kind. But Sammy doesn’t need to know about that. Maybe not ever.

“I uh—I called Cas.”

“What?” my spoon drops into the soup and sloshes chicken broth onto the carpeting. I hardly notice it. “Why—why would you do that?”

“Because he’s been worried. And he needed to know, Dean.” 

“He didn’t need to know anything.”

“Dean—he’s family. I couldn’t just—I needed to tell him, okay? I needed someone to talk to. You don’t understand how it’s—I know it was hard for you. I can’t imagine it. But I couldn’t help you until you wanted help and I had to just sit here, worrying and wanting to tear my hair out. I needed Cas. He was there for me.”

It—it hurts more than I ever imagined it would to hear Sammy say he needed someone to be there for him and that someone wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been. I was too busy drowning in a misery of my own making with Michael.

“I—I’m sorry.”

“No,” Sammy shakes his head, “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have been there for you. This—this is all on me.”

“No Dean,” Sam grabs one of my hands, his grip so fierce it hurts my knuckles, “This is on Michael. And Michael alone. Don’t take blame that doesn’t belong to you.”

“I let—”

“You didn’t let that man do anything. He pressured and coerced and bullied his way into getting what he wanted. Don’t let him win by thinking this had anything to do with you ‘letting’ Michael do anything.”

“You weren’t there.” 

“I didn’t need to be.”

“Michael—he won’t just let me go that easily, Sammy. He—”

“I know.”

My eyes are burning again, and I feel like I can’t swallow. Like I might choke on the knot of emotion that wants to engulf me.

“It’s—It’s part of why I called Cas, Dean. He can help us. He already filed a no-contact order with the court and had Michael served at work yesterday. Michael knows if he gets within a hundred feet of this house, he’s going to get arrested. He’s smart. He’ll stay away. For now, anyway.”

“And later?”

Because God, I can feel deep in the marrow of my bones that this won’t die easily. Michael isn’t one to give up on a bone before he’s chewed it clean in half. He won’t give me up without a bloody merciless fight.

“One day at a time.”

For two weeks, that’s exactly what it is. One day at a time.

I cook meals that I don’t eat. I stare out the windows and will myself to get showered and dressed each day. I lay in bed and smell Michael’s skin and want to crawl right out of my own. On a Sunday morning, so early the sun hasn’t even come out yet, I brew a pot of coffee as dark as I can stand and take it in a thermos in Baby.

I drive north, through sprawling fields and predawn grey until I reach the lake Sammy and I found some years ago. Mirror Lake. I don’t have a fishing pole with me, else I might have tried my luck. Instead, I grab that thermos of coffee and perch on a rock nearest the edge. And I wait.

I wait for the sun to crest over the tops of the trees and for the sunlight to spill onto my face and then I breathe it in and for the first time in weeks, I feel like I might actually make it out to the other side of this. I feel like—I might _want_ to.

And it’s something. It’s better than something because it’s a start. One that I grab onto with both hands.

When I come back, I find Sammy cooking something vaguely smelling like pancakes in the kitchen to an audience of one. A man who I have yet to see wear anything but a suit and trench coat, no matter the season. Be it rain, snow, or sunshine.

“Hello, Dean.”

I feel the smile in my eyes before it reaches my mouth. Then something clicks soft and noiseless in my chest when Castiel gets up from his seat at the bar to hug me. His arms are familiar and his aftershave a feathering of evergreen in my nose. Home. He smells like home. And friendship and loyalty. All the things I associate with Cas. And in this moment, I finally feel it.

I finally feel free.

“Hey,” I murmur into his shoulder and feel his arms tighten just before releasing me.

“You were up early.”

“Yeah. I caught the sunrise.”

Sammy glances over his shoulder, one hand reaching into the fridge blindly for the milk, “Mirror Lake?”

I nod, “Yup. That’d be the one.”

“Best sunrise in the county.”

I sigh, letting the tension go in places I didn’t even know I still had tension in, and I obey when Cas pulls out the seat at the bar next to him. The quiet that follows is brief and comfortable. A soft familiarity that we’ve grown into from years upon years of living life together.

When Cas does decide to speak, the first thing he says is about the last thing I expect him to say. Which is—for lack of a better descriptor—very much Cas. “Tell me about that beard. Is it staying for good?”

“My beard?” I blink, then startle myself when I laugh, “You wanna know about my beard?”

Cas smirks over his coffee, “It is a valid question.”

I shake my head, amusement making my chest squeeze, “I suppose it is.”

“It is,” Sammy chimes in, dropping a plate of pancakes in front of me doused in butter and syrup. The works. Just like how I wouldn’t have hesitated to eat pancakes not two years previous.

For a very, very brief moment, there is an ugly feeling of panic in my middle as my mouth waters. I stare down at the food, wondering how many calories Michael would likely prattle off at me and then I feel Castiel’s hand on my knee. A firm heat that doesn’t demand or shove or threaten. It certainly doesn’t shame.

And I force my gaze to his and nod.

He nods back, eyes as clear of a blue as the lake I just sat at.

Then I eat the damn pancakes. Every. Last. One.


End file.
